Sanguine Lies
by Pandastacia
Summary: Forty-three seconds. Out of three-hundred sixty-five days, it's not enough. But they will live with this unconventional fantasy.


**worlds away  
****disclaimer:** I do not own "Lord of the Rings".  
**dedication:** to speed! happy really-belated birthday!  
**summary/prompt: **"To sin was always known to be a horrendous thing. And yet, sometimes, we couldn't help but to willingly be the sinners."

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_**A giant "Thank you!" goes to Saraa for beta-ing this.**_

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_Every year on the ides of March…_

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The ring had melted into the fires of Mount Doom over a decade ago- the Fellowship had dissolved into the winds with the casualness of a backwards wave even as everyone turned away from their instinctive thirst for power to look for tomorrow. Some returned to the darkness of their underground homes while others looked forward to misty lands, all at peace.

But some have stayed behind- _at least for a while_- and she knows it in her deepest of hearts that, if it hadn't been for this… this _appointment_, he would already be in the Undying Lands.

(**But there's peace and then there's passive peace.**)

Red silk and gold hair flutter in the wind atop Minas Tirith as she just looks west, surveying the land for a flash of blinding _white_.

There is no communication for three hundred and sixty-four days, yet they manage the same schedule without fail- a few seconds of _together_ across this widewide_wide_ open field.

(**Perhaps life had always been meant to be made out of easy, strange choices.**)

Easy, it was not, this distance and seeing attachment as a spark in something that wasn't even _hers_.

But they can live with this unconventional fantasy.

It's just a few moments, but one day- one day- she wants one minute with him. Sixty seconds of sharing souls and unleashing secrets upon the one person who already knew- Eowyn _knows_ she wants at least that.

(**But she knows better than to ever expect anything better than what she has now.**)

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… _her heart breaks and mends once again._

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Now there are only five seconds left until six minutes past six o'clock.

It's _their_ time and no one can steal it from them because it's- this _thing_ will not- _cannot-_ make sense to anyone because this driving _need_ for forty-three seconds away from the world doesn't make any sense to them either. It's just this point in time that happens once a year and it tides them for the next long drought.

Eowyn doesn't know how she knows what the hour of the devil looks like- she just knows that suddenly she sees a pale _glimmer_ and she wishes there had been a railing built onto the tower so that she can lean over to see a _wee_ bit better.

Seconds pass and the girl- because the woman has been claimed for years now and waits for when she can let go of the little one inside who believed in innocent attraction and true…- watches, mesmerized by details she cannot make out but imagines anyway.

Every year, she wishes she had eyes like him- eagle eyes that can see clear at over a league away- or his agile grace- pounding silently through the prairie grass- and his skill with the bow- swift and certain and _strong_.

(**No one challenges him [**_**Gimli didn't count for that has always been in brother-like competition, she thinks**_**] and **_**wins**_**.)**

Something stirs beneath her breast- it is warm and large and _proud_ and-

Then it goes cold as she hears a voice behind her. "What are you doing here at such an hour?"

_He_ disappears.

She doesn't quite spin around so much as looking over her shoulder at Faramir. "It's a beautiful evening."

There are precious seconds like these when she wonders if he guesses the truth, that she hadn't been _there_ when she saw another option like a whisp on the wind. She wonders if, maybe, he notices the chicken scratches on her side of the dining hall table, counting to the fifteenth day of the third month of the year.

(**One moment. In a blinding not-second. Flahing by too fast.**)

"Let's go downstairs, love." His hand is buried softly in her hair and, god, how she wants to _scream_ because it is wrong when it should be right and she is sick of losing this time because it's the one moment when she isn't _lying_- to anyone, not even to herself, anymore. She cannot imagine ever being so _angry_ with anyone in her life- because he _stole_ something from her. It does not matter that there had only been five second left- because it had been hers- not his, _hers_.

Never before did Eowyn want to strike someone so badly to teach them that, simply because they own her hand, does not mean they own her shield, her sword, and her-

But she says, "Okay."

(**Because she is not good at bending rules. Never has. Only good at breaking them on accident and putting things back together with chips missing.**)

There is a pulsating urge on the back of her neck as she follows the Steward of Gondor back to the castle. So on the pretext of burying her nose into the crook of her husband's neck and breathing in the scent of his robes, Eowyn peeks back towards the edge of the field even though she cannot even dare hope that…

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_Because they realized the truth after it was too late to change reality, so where does that leave room in Pandora's beautiful box for that faith for survival?_

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He is there again.

_Thirty-nine…_

_Forty…_

_Forty-one…_

_Forty-two…_

The last second of him for fifty-two weeks…

_Forty-three…_

And then he's gone and she's looking ahead without a backward glance towards walls of stone and bows and predictability.

There is just three hundred and sixty-four days, twenty three hours, and fifty minutes until freedom came again.

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_They made a small sin- a tiny one- except her heart belonged to him and his to her and nothing- _nothing- _could send her heart into another's arms as much as she desired it to._

_Never a regret._

_Not such a small sin, indeed.

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Uh, I hope you enjoyed that. I'm sorry if a few facts were incorrect- this is my first try, writing Lord of the Rings_.

Hopefully not my last. ;)

-pandastacia


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